finally had a chance to study mandarin in china, had a great august in kunming

I attended Minds Abroad in 2019 and had a great experience. my main goal was on language immersion as i'd been studying mandarin for a couple of years and though i knew a lot it didn't all click together and i coudln't really have a conversation. so spending a solid month in an intensive chinese program, with chinese native teachers and also chinese students on the program, was just what i needed. i was also placed in a volunteer site in the afternoon where no one spoke english (aside from the chinese student peers that were taking part in the program too). but that was an enviorment where all the kids and teachers at the ngo we were volunteering at could only really understand chinese so i was able to practice. weekends were fun traveling around the province, very eye opening. .